As the owner and president of MindStir Media, a self-publishing company, I’m asked some variation of this question quite often: “How much does self-publishing cost?” My answer is usually the same: “That depends on your goals…” You see, I’m a bestselling self-published author, and my goal has always been to make money with my books. But some writers don’t care about that. So…
If Your Goal Isn’t To Make Money With Your Self-Published Book…
If your goal of self-publishing is simply to see your book in print, and you don’t care about sales, then your best bet is to go the cheapest route possible. That route usually entails designing your own book cover with a cheap template; self-editing the manuscript; doing your own book interior layout using Microsoft Word; creating your own account with a print-on-demand provider and/or publishing straight to ebook. One can usually do all of this for a couple hundred bucks or less. The book will look cheap but this won’t matter to you because you’re not looking to make money from this project.
If Your Goal Is To Make Money With Your Self-Published Book…
You should hire professionals for the following services. You need to do this in order create a high-quality product and compete in a very competitive marketplace.
- Book cover design: A high-quality cover design (custom, not template-based) will run you about $500 – $1000. This includes the actual cover art.
- Professional book editing: The rates of a pro editor vary greatly, but I’ve found that most successful editors charge by the page or by the word. For a 100,000 word novel (about 400 pages in book form) you can count on spending around $1,500 to $4,000.
- Interior layout: As with editing, the price for interior layout will depend on the size of your book. For a full-length book (not a children’s picture book) you’re looking at a range of $500 to $1000.
- ISBN: You can buy your own ISBN for about $125 via Bowker.
- Barcode: You can also buy a bar code through Bowker for $25.
- Printing: I recommend using print-on-demand (POD). Sometimes there’s a setup fee and sometimes there isn’t. Usually the setup fees range from $0 to $200. But you’ll always need to pay for the copies you print and those printing prices depend on your book’s trim size, page count, paper type, book format/binding, ink type (color or black & white interior), etc….
- Distribution: Most POD printers also include distribution with the setup fee(s) or charge an additional fee.
Let’s crunch those numbers:
Low-end: $500 + $1500 + $500 + $125 + $25 = $2650 (w/out book printing or advertising)
High-end: $1000 + $4000 + 1000 + $125 + $25 + $200 = $6350 (w/out book printing or advertising)
Additionally, if you want to publish as an ebook: Pro ebook conversion/formatting (and I’m not talking about the crappy automated software that makes your book look horrible) is usually about $200-400. If you publish directly through Amazon and Barnes & Noble there are no setup fees for the ebook portion of your book publishing project.
The other option is to hire one company to handle the entire self-publishing process.
MindStir Media’s Gold self-publishing services package includes everything mentioned above and also an author website design; a professional press release; social media marketing; and mentoring for $3799. This self-publishing route is very convenient (and less expensive overall). You don’t have to locate a whole bunch of book publishing services professionals to put your book together and you don’t have to setup your own printing and distribution. Companies like MindStir also assist with book marketing/advertising. Visit www.mindstirmedia.com for more info.